From: Paolo Serra <pserra_at_email.protected>
Date: Thu, 24 May 2018 09:33:21 +0200

Dear colleague,

The SoFiA team is pleased to announce the release of SoFiA 1.1, the latest stable version of the Source Finding Application, now available at https://github.com/SoFiA-Admin/SoFiA/releases/tag/v1.2.0 <https://github.com/SoFiA-Admin/SoFiA/releases/tag/v1.2.0> .

This is the 10ᵗʰ stable release of SoFiA, the Source Finding Application. It introduces a few new features and comes with a large number of improvements and bug fixes.

The most notable new features include changes in the way SoFiA measures and corrects for noise variations across a data cube. SoFiA now allows users to measure and correct for the local noise variation in a running window across the cube. In addition, all noise measurement algorithms can now be applied to only negative, only positive or all pixels in an attempt to make the noise measurement more robust against outliers (such as sources).

In addition to these new features, several changes have resulted in an overall better performance of the pipeline in terms of both speed and memory usage. Several temporal spikes in memory usage have been removed, and changes in time-critical algorithms have improved the overall speed of SoFiA, in particular in relation to noise measurement. Our aim is to continue to improve SoFiA’s algorithms to reduce the time and memory footprint of the pipeline.

The most notable changes and bug fixes are listed below.

New features

Compression enabled for position-velocity diagrams. (f43b723 <https://github.com/SoFiA-Admin/SoFiA/commit/f43b72366743721cdc2772c3947bc0e76a9c8f16>)
SoFiA version number added to most output products, messages and parameter files. (5b060ab <https://github.com/SoFiA-Admin/SoFiA/commit/5b060ab58aecf7a0d3113f7d3f8f6d72a7bd63ea>, 325c25d <https://github.com/SoFiA-Admin/SoFiA/commit/325c25d9288b997ee0876fca18288b690bdb40d9>, b9851c3 <https://github.com/SoFiA-Admin/SoFiA/commit/b9851c381bc62bad5782aed3d7721956e167ddba>)
SoFiA can now flag data based on a user-specified flagging cube. (c43ca04 <https://github.com/SoFiA-Admin/SoFiA/commit/c43ca045bc414982892b9e1a6dda62af3c7dbbce>, b39b6d3 <https://github.com/SoFiA-Admin/SoFiA/commit/b39b6d35c5d2f72970278fdb6070924405e7b80a>, bb1ee5d <https://github.com/SoFiA-Admin/SoFiA/commit/bb1ee5d7cd8205bf2077f7207bffc0e80788824f>)
SoFiA can now measure and correct for the local noise level in a data cube. (2cd9255 <https://github.com/SoFiA-Admin/SoFiA/commit/2cd925510573d41ebbac993ce0aa4507f09efd8a>, 3a0bf67 <https://github.com/SoFiA-Admin/SoFiA/commit/3a0bf675b24c5399dc9df5679a54d2384bcbe246>)
Any noise measurement algorithm can now be applied to only negative, only positive, or all pixels in a cube. (0c9ad38 <https://github.com/SoFiA-Admin/SoFiA/commit/0c9ad388ee9100ad08b14652fc612ecd8cd60bf9>)
SoFiA can now write the noise measurement file to disk. (3a0bf67 <https://github.com/SoFiA-Admin/SoFiA/commit/3a0bf675b24c5399dc9df5679a54d2384bcbe246>)
The GUI now offers pre-defined parameter settings for different data sets. (df002a4 <https://github.com/SoFiA-Admin/SoFiA/commit/df002a479bbc9f66192b5d31ad1fa97db8c3cdb9>)
A new pipeline.pedantic options controls how SoFiA reacts to unknown or multiply-defined user parameters. (38a3ae7 <https://github.com/SoFiA-Admin/SoFiA/commit/38a3ae71f8b87973b943d7a8dd3257c796362a29>)
Bug-fixes

Several bug fixes in import module. (a55cf69 <https://github.com/SoFiA-Admin/SoFiA/commit/a55cf690ebc90d08eb988f3e511eeac40b50d36a>)
Fixed bugs in output file checks and changed a few output file names. (ea25389 <https://github.com/SoFiA-Admin/SoFiA/commit/ea253894b283796ec19e5b113a50980d5d24a9d0>, 43d94a0 <https://github.com/SoFiA-Admin/SoFiA/commit/43d94a043c44caa39d0e24b930bf41500049a509>)
Fixed handling of integer-type FITS files in GUI data viewer. (0f0609a <https://github.com/SoFiA-Admin/SoFiA/commit/0f0609a84121cdd20b9d9098799cad65ad19e79b>)
Fixed a memory leak in Busy Function fitting algorithm. (a8c5435 <https://github.com/SoFiA-Admin/SoFiA/commit/a8c54352be824772ba41d3a87f62f24d8a675c44>)
Some bug fixes and improvements in the mask dilation algorithm. (e6f539d <https://github.com/SoFiA-Admin/SoFiA/commit/e6f539d4e381c76df2e0d7177e5d3ffaa29754ea>, 7b17ead <https://github.com/SoFiA-Admin/SoFiA/commit/7b17eadc591f174667374c14cbff50de013d4995>)
Other changes

The current versions of Python, NumPy, SciPy and Astropy are reported at the beginning of each pipeline run. (334bd53 <https://github.com/SoFiA-Admin/SoFiA/commit/334bd53cf6e316feb3c5f4fb56f874cfaed6de93>)
Dependency checks are carried out by the setup script. (1f79cfe <https://github.com/SoFiA-Admin/SoFiA/commit/1f79cfe8cba30cb6478c50f636d254564083ff61>)
Some clean-up of the graphical user interface. (acf63be <https://github.com/SoFiA-Admin/SoFiA/commit/acf63bedf3489758479ef72826fb00a2bc00f90a>, 2dd5f48 <https://github.com/SoFiA-Admin/SoFiA/commit/2dd5f481f71d360aa80282a107863de625c07572>, 3dcf29a <https://github.com/SoFiA-Admin/SoFiA/commit/3dcf29afaa146a82fbe23968e4bcb77603da2177>)
Changed the way in which the parameterisation module handles data. (f94c035 <https://github.com/SoFiA-Admin/SoFiA/commit/f94c035d7f8be820ec35d22d309470bb07c0c8dd>)
Different types of messages are now highlighted in colour in SoFiA’s terminal output. (d7b465c <https://github.com/SoFiA-Admin/SoFiA/commit/d7b465cb22c346f702325ca11ec0ffc705a99a2f>)
SoFiA will now warn users when a parameter file was created by a different version of SoFiA. (5696839 <https://github.com/SoFiA-Admin/SoFiA/commit/5696839077a669cf626029b68f95630e4cc2dc4d>)

On behalf of the SoFiA team,
Paolo Serra
Received on 2018-05-24 17:35:22